Saturday, March 19, 2011

The death of desperation.

At the beginning of a sexual relationship, you tend to have sex pretty much any time you see each other and you've got more than 10 minutes of privacy. (You do, right? I probably shouldn't be using the presumptive "you." I do, anyway.) Some of it is the thrill of a new relationship, but some of it is that feeling that you haven't had this kind of sex in a while and maybe you won't get so many chances to do it, so you better grab when you can. It's sex that's partly based on wanting to have sex, and partly based on fear of not having sex.

And then comes the point when you're comfortable coming over, having plenty of time and privacy, and you share some dinner and talk a bit and hug a bit and go home. It's easy for this to feel like you're getting desexualized, domesticated, like the lust and passion are dying. But I don't think it's necessarily so. A little bit is the loss of that initial flame, but it's also the loss of that initial desperation, that worry that "I could lose this at any moment, gotta get while the getting's good." Having someone you can fuck, and not fucking them, can be an act not of passivity but of fearlessness.

Fucking like there's no tomorrow can be awesome. But there's great comfort and strength in the way you can live when you believe there is a tomorrow.

6 comments:

I agree. After a decade of monogamy, I'd say our sex is actually better, although somewhat less frequent just because daily life gets in the way. But yeah, some of that is because we know we're going to be together tomorrow and the next day and the next, so there's plenty of opportunity and no need to rush or squeeze sex in where it doesn't fit perfectly.

And interestingly, at the beginning of our relationship I was frustrated at how gentle and loving my partner was during sex (that's just his style, mine runs more to pain and humiliation) but as our relationship has matured I really love his tenderness. The rest of the world isn't so sweet all the time. Feeling so loved, plus just knowing each other so well, makes for some awesome sex.

This is one of the weirdest things about being well into a long-distance relationship (that won't be long-distance forever). We have the "we'll be together lots in the future, no worries" feeling AND the "get this while you can!" feeling, and that can get kind of muddy ("we have an hour, wanna fuck just because we can?" is not the hottest come-on, or so she tells me) and make sex feel a little stressful.

... but you know what's a great stress reliever? Sex. So. It's really a problem that solves itself!

In most of my long-term relationships, the sex died down to nothing by the end because the relationship itself was poisoned and dying. Therefore, when my current boyfriend and I began to have sex a bit less, it made me feel like, "OMG THIS MUST BE THE BEGINNING OF THE END!!!"

But of course it was really just the "death of desperation" that you describe here. And since then, I've become even more secure with my boy; more so than I would've thought possible. And...we sometimes go longer without sexual activity than I ever thought a "healthy" relationship was supposed to. But then again some leftover teenaged part of my brain seems to conflate "love" with "fucking all the time" even though my grownup brain knows there's no connection, so...

My GF and I had sex every night we spent together from the first time we had sex in mid-2004 to when medical problems intervened at the end of 2006. And after the first year we were living together.</bragging>

There's still a disappointment when we don't, but I don't feel like we may never again.

Yes! This explains my thoughts so well! I was just thinking about this situation the other day - how we'd have sex all the time, no matter the inconvenience, and how it's slowed down (though the passion and desire are still there, we just don't go for it EVERY chance we have anymore). But you're so right! That doesn't mean the relationship is fizzling. Because it's amazing. Perversecowgirl said it well too - my previous relationships had an indication of the death of said relationship, so I had a small period where I worried about that in my current one.